Thursday, May 6, 2010

I am pretty hooked to twitter these days. Off course! who isn't. I mean the God(s) himself is there. He joined yesterday and already has a following of more than 1,55,000 and counting. And the other God finds time in between shooting for Ra.1 to post perky tweets about life in general. Needless to say given his sense of humour they are always a pleasure to read.
So what did twitter do to revolutionise social networking which previously it's predecessors like orkut and facebook failed to do? Well! twitter has done away with the celebrities being from a different planet concept completely. Now you can have a sneak peek in to their lives and more. You can have ministers thrown out. The cricket baron being shown the door- all that and more happening on twitter.
It began as a platform where you shared as much you wanted to share. So it worked out fine with all. But there were some like the sex bomb from India hissing! her way on twitter or the dimpled darling shaking off her image of being everything bubbly to being a spokesperson on issues of serious consideration(?). so who gets the next jhappi? :P. There were also those reticent ones with brilliant sense of humour who tweet once in a while but when they do they make you go roflmao.
And then there are bores like the uptight journalist who tweets about integrity in journalism and why kasab's trial shouldn't be converted in to a media trial while her own channel telecasts minute by minute update of it. Sure! we haven't forgotten Kargil, but we haven't forgotten the hyperventilation in front of Taj either.
And there are others who speak sense and make sense and reverse.The not so known ones. They are the celeb category no.2 with a large number of followers.
But in between all these you get to know too much. Information that don't bother you.But you still bite the bait. Why? because we are quite crazy about celeb watching. So when this evening I was checking out the twitter page of young, suave bengali film actress who was having a conversation with a leading film producing company's head honcho about they never offering her anything, I felt bitter. Come on! think about it how many times have you actually imagined the scene happening in front of your eyes where Shabana Azmi is begging Satyajit Ray to cast her in some of his work in bengali. As the legend goes, she wasn't satisfied that very small share of the arclight in Shatranj ki Khiladi under Ray's tutelage and Ray wouldn't agree because her Bengali was not good. True, we have seen Shabana nostalgically reminiscing about that moment and her "Manik Da" refusing on the grounds of her poor bengali on TV or read about it in print. But there's the charm of it. It didn't happen in front of your eyes leaving nothing to your imagination.
It's often told that every incident leads to a story. So when Mrinal Sen's office regularly used to get a call from a top Bombay actress' office, everyone imagined it to be Madame Rekha. But the Sen-Rekha combo never worked out. There was silence from both the sides. Nobody confirmed or denied. But we can still have one page of dedicated fan story on this in Anandalok (A bengali film magazine). What happens in this case? there is nothing left to your imagination.

Dear Twitter as much as you have fulfilled our aspirations of celeb watching/stalking, you have killed the romance of imagining and weaving out our stories about them. Day after day. Everyday.